Articles

Remembering Chornobyl

Kuchynskyi, Valerii

T
Twenty-six years ago, Saturday, April 26, 1986, was a warm, sunny day in Kyiv. Early in the morning, as I was passing through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs building, where I worked at the time, the guard, a non-commissioned officer on permanent service with the Ministry and a friend, greeted me warmly and informed me, confidentially, that something unusual was going on: “dozens of trucks, loaded with soldiers wearing special uniforms, rushed in the early hours towards the nuclear power plant at Chornobyl. Something serious must have happened there,” he cautioned.

That was the first time I heard about the Chornobyl nuclear disaster that to this day remains the worst nuclear catastrophe in contemporary history. The nuclear plant is situated a mere 60 miles from Ukraine's capital.

Geographic Areas

Files

  • thumnail for harrimanreview_v19_no1:4_8-11.pdf harrimanreview_v19_no1:4_8-11.pdf application/pdf 524 KB Download File

Also Published In

Title
The Harriman Review
Publisher
The Harriman Institute, Columbia University

More About This Work

Academic Units
Harriman Institute
Publisher
The Harriman Institute, Columbia University
Series
The Harriman Review
Published Here
January 7, 2021